When considering the percentage of the population that consumed Internet based services in various countries in early 2005, the difference between industrial countries and developing countries is clearly demonstrated. The penetration in the USA was 48%, in Canada and Australia 46%, in Sweden 53%, in Germany 36%, in the UK 38%, in France 26%, in Spain 22%, whereas in Brazil 6%, in South Africa 1.5% and in Ethiopia, Ghana, Egypt and many other counties in Africa the percentage of the population consuming Internet based services is less than 1% (source: globalEDGE—http://globaledge.msu.edu). Although data connectivity in rural communities has been found to be a factor that increases social and economical benefits of the people living in these communities, developing countries still face many barriers in providing Internet connectivity to the masses. For example, the lack of wire-line infrastructure in rural areas makes it difficult to deploy services traditionally provisioned via wire line broadband, and of course many households do not have computers.
The concept of receiving Internet web-content at the television set is relatively new but still known in the art as can be seen for example in WO 2008142472 which presents a converged communication system having the TV set as the main networked device for integrated content search, delivery and consumption. Online content is delivered from the Internet to TV, by way that traditional TV broadcasts are conveyed together with multimedia and non multimedia data retrieved from online resources, are seamlessly integrated in one delivery channel and conveyed along that channel to TV viewers.
Even though that there are some references in the art for combining Internet with television broadcasts, they do not solve the problem where there is no infrastructure available for providing the subscriber with a return (upstream) channel through which he/she may forward communications towards a non-cable TV service provider, and particularly they are not aimed to provide the user of a TV apparatus with the option to use that apparatus for simultaneously watching TV broadcasts while being interactively connected to various Internet applications.
In addition, one of the drawbacks which providers of TV broadcasts via satellite are facing, is, their lack of ability to properly communicate with their subscribers in the upstream direction. Typically, when a subscriber wishes to enquire about a certain problem being experienced (e.g. reception quality), he/she will call by telephone a service center of the satellite service provider and will explain the problem to a representative at the service center, a process which consumes substantial human resources while still being limited in options that can be offered to the subscriber.
The present invention therefore seeks to provide a solution to overcome the above-mentioned problems.